Having psyched himself up for another battle with Casey Stoner, Valentino Rossi could hardly believe his luck when the Australian crashed out in front of him.
50 points -the equivalent of two races- separate Valentino Rossi from his nearest rival after consecutive victories at Laguna Seca and Brno. Whilst his was a day to remember, Fiat Yamaha teammate Jorge Lorenzo had a difficult fight with his Michelin tyres for tenth place.
Valentino Rossi - Winner
`I was confident today because my bike was fast from Friday practice, and with Jeremy we made a small modification to the front after warm-up to allow me to be a bit faster in some sections, and it worked very well. I lost about half a second getting past Hopkins at the start and Casey was incredibly fast at that stage, like he´d already done ten laps! For a short time I was worried but then, after two laps, I understood that my bike was working very well and that I was fast enough to try to catch him. I had closed a little bit already and gradually the red bike was becoming a bit bigger in front of me, and I think this is when he started to push harder and made his mistake. I was anticipating a very hard battle if I did catch him, so when I saw the red bike slide out I could hardly believe it – this made things a lot easier for me! After that I just enjoyed riding my bike; my Bridgestone tyres worked very well until the end and my M1 felt very good. Of course I can't count this as a complete victory because Casey fell, and I am sorry for him, but this is racing and I have to be happy with this result. We are 50 points clear which is a lot and I am very excited to be going to Misano in this situation. However we know that 50 points is still not always enough when you have someone as strong as Casey and so we won´t relax. Now we have two days of testing and we will try some new electronics in order to help me open the throttle earlier and also, of course, test some Bridgestone tyres.´
Jorge Lorenzo - Tenth
`This race is a bit sad for me because we have the potential to do a lot better. However considering what has happened this weekend and, above all, the problems with the front tyre, I think we have done almost as much as we could. At the start I didn´t want to take too many risks and I could feel that the front tyre was getting worse on each lap, but on the other hand the rear tyre was getting better each lap! I know that we have had had problems this weekend but I know that Michelin are working very hard, so now we will try to use the test to make some improvements. I want to say thank you to all of my team for their hard work, congratulate Valentino for his victory and finally also Toni Elias for his podium.´
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